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Humidity   Listen
noun
Humidity  n.  
1.
Moisture; dampness; a moderate degree of wetness, which is perceptible to the eye or touch; used especially of the atmosphere, or of anything which has absorbed moisture from the atmosphere, as clothing.
2.
Specifically: The content of water vapor in the air, expressed as a percent of the maximum amount of water vapor that the air can hold at the given temperature; also called relative humidity. The capacity of the air to hold moisture increases with temperature, so if the temperature changes without changing the absolute content of the atmospheric moisture, the relative humidity will also change.
relative humidity Same as humidity (2). Note: In hygrometrical reports (as of the United States Signal Service) complete saturation of the air by water vapor is designated by a relative humidity of 100, and its partial saturation by smaller numbers in direct proportion to the actual content of water vapor.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Humidity" Quotes from Famous Books



... "running"—that is, leakage of wind from one pipe to another. In poor chests of this description the slides are apt to stick when the atmosphere is excessively damp, and to become too loose on days when little or no humidity is present. ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... were invested with a particular interest and originality. They were in progress for a whole year, in a thick forest of almost impenetrable brushwood, split with numerous deep ravines and abrupt, slippery precipices. The humidity of the forest is excessive, the waters pouring down from high promontories. The soldiers who struggled here practically spent two ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... The corn, herb of the lowlands, so magnificently green in the Spring, displayed shades of dead straw in the depths of the valleys, and, on all the summits, beeches and oaks shed their leaves. The air was almost cold; an odorous humidity came out of the mossy earth and, at times, there came from above a light shower. One felt it near and anguishing, that season of clouds and of long rains, which returns every time with the same air of bringing the definitive ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... stretch we sank into a silently reflective and forgetful mood, while the rain-drops dribbled down our noses, sopped from our mackintoshes to our saddles, whence they re-ascended, through the capillary influence of garments, to our necks, and soon equalised our humidity. ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... these inland navigators ply their vocation with only one ambition, and that to become the owner of a tjalk, and to rear thereon a family of towers. It is said that the life is one that requires the consumption of unlimited quantitics of 'schnapps,' and the humidity of the atmosphere is undoubted. But even free libations do not diminish the prosperity of the bargees. They are a thriving race, and it must also be noted to their credit that they are well behaved, and not given to quarrels. Collisions on the thickly-covered canals are rare; malicious ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... digs her gallery in a bramble-stick that is lopped short, but still fresh and green. The house of this Fly-huntress, therefore, suffers from damp, as the sap enters, especially on the lower floors. This seems to me rather insanitary. To avoid the humidity, or for other reasons which escape me, the Solenius does not dig very far into her bramble-stump and consequently can stack but a small number of cells in it. A series of five cocoons gives me first four females and then one male; another series, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... difficulty, and ordered to be shot on the spot. Four guides pushed him towards the sea by thrusting their carbines against his back; when close to the water's edge they drew the triggers, but all the four muskets hung fire: a circumstance which was accounted for by the great humidity of the night. The Nablousian threw himself into the water, and, swimming with great agility and rapidity, gained a ridge of rocks so far off that not a shot from the whole troop, which fired as it passed, reached him. Bonaparte, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... quite moist; even when the soil seems a little dryish the relative humidity of the soil air usually approaches 100 percent. Soil animals consequently have not developed the ability to conserve their body moisture and are speedily killed by dry conditions. When faced with desiccation they retreat deeper into the soil if there is oxygen and ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... raised, although their flesh is not savory, because of the humidity of the country. These animals sicken and die for that reason, and because they eat certain poisonous herbs. Ewes and rams, although often brought from Nueva Espana, never multiply. Consequently there are none of these animals, for the climate ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... was observed both by August's psychrometer and Saussure's hygrometer. But I do not believe that these instruments give trustworthy results at a temperature considerably under the freezing-point. Moreover the degree of humidity at the place where there can be a question of setting up a psychrometer and hygrometer during a wintering in the high north, has not the meteorological importance which has often been ascribed to it. For the instruments are as a rule set up in an isolated louvre case, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... therefore that the asterisk, bull, or minotaur, in the centre of a square or labyrinth equally mean the same as the Indian lingam,—that is the male personification of the productive attribute placed in the female, or heat acting upon humidity. Sometimes the bull is placed between two dolphins, and sometimes upon a dolphin or another fish; and in other instances the goat or the ram occupy the same situation. Which are all different modes of expressing different ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II

... holes in the wall. The waste water trickled through them and dripped continually as though from the wet locks of the forest. Inside, in the greenish, dripping darkness, sat curiously marked toads, like little water-nymphs, each in her grotto, shining with unwholesome humidity. And up among the timbers of the third story hung Hanne's canary, singing quite preposterously, its beak pointing up toward the spot of fiery light overhead. Across the floor of the courtyard went an endless procession of people, light-shy ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... America the transition from winter to summer is very abrupt. In the pools and lakes, the bullfrogs croaked in rivalry with the high, clear shrilling of the other American frogs. Now came that unendurable combination of heat and humidity which Mrs. Schmidt so dreaded. She suffered fearfully during the summer, when she continued with her hard ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... When equatorial productions were dreadfully distressed by fall of temperature, and probably by changed humidity, and changed proportional numbers of other plants and enemies (though they might favour some of the species), I must admit that they all would be exterminated if productions exactly fitted, not only for ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... yet speaking, the elder Mr. Hammond came in. He looked wretched. The redness and humidity of his eyes showed want of sleep, and the relaxed muscles of his face exhaustion from weariness and suffering. He drew the person with whom I had been talking aside, and continued an earnest conversation with him for many minutes—often ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... absolutely essential, and the concurrence of which is indispensable for the production of bad air (malaria). First, a temperature which does not fall below 20 deg.C. (67.5 deg.F.); next, a very moderate degree of permanent humidity of the soil; and finally, the direct action of the oxygen of the air upon the strata of earth which contain the ferment. If a single one of these three conditions be wanting, the development of malaria becomes impossible. This is a point ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... M. it was deserted. A taxi stood at a corner; its chauffeur had left it there, and evidently gone to a nearby lunch room. The street lights were, as always, inadequate. The night was sultry and dark, with a leaden sky and a breathless humidity that presaged a thunder storm. The houses were mostly unlighted at this hour. There was an occasional apartment house among them, but mostly they were low, ramshackle affairs ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... work has been carried on with a vigor and enthusiasm that are thrilling in their inspiration. An improved instrument was added that recorded temperatures on a self-registering roll, all fluctuations, and the highest and lowest temperatures, wind-pressures, all variations in humidity, temperature, and air pressure as well as the directions and the velocity of the wind for periods of seventy days and more. This instrument was the achievement of Professor S.P. Fergusson, for many years a pioneer worker in mountain meteorology at Blue Hill Observatory ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... the word "kite" at meal-times. The lad made fliers of every shape and pattern, and his kites were usually so stable that it was upon his model that the meteorograph was fastened which registered the pressure, humidity and temperature of the air and the velocity of the wind, according to the request of the young fellow who had sent the League the two first kites. The Issaquena County Weather Review was compelled to run a regular ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... cloth of gold, and that of the Abbot of Westminster with cloth of Tars. The royal seat at the coronation feast was draped in "golden silk of Turk," and in order to save this costly covering from "the humidity of the walls," 24 ells of canvas were provided. Red and grey sindon hung before the royal table; the King sat on samitelle cushions, and two pieces of velvet "to put under the King" also appear in the account. (Rot. Magnae Gard., pro Coronatione et in Palatio, ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... "The humidity; that's easily understood. But you'll have to put up with it in the future. After nightfall our windows must ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... pressure of 1200 to 2000 pounds to the square inch it takes the most delicate impressions. Billiard balls of bakelite are claimed to be better than ivory because, having no grain, they do not swell unequally with heat and humidity and so lose their sphericity. Pipestems and beads of bakelite have the clear brilliancy of amber and greater strength. Fountain pens made of it are transparent so you can see how much ink you have left. A new and enlarging field for ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... Divinities. They are the potent Gods worshipped in that Island, and whose names are consecrated in the books of our Augurs. One of them is male and the other female; and they bear the same relation to each other as the soul does to the body, humidity to dryness." The Curetes, in Crete, had builded an altar to Heaven and to Earth; whose Mysteries they celebrated at ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... it will also appear that cattle are more subject to these diseases than any other species of domesticated animals, and that the pestilence is always most fearful among them. It is also evident that the maladies which proceed from cold or humidity are more frequent in the temperate and southern parts of Europe than those which depend upon drought, or almost ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... it, another mystery, more profound and graver floats amid these thick mists, perhaps the mystery of the creation itself! For was it not in stagnant and muddy water, amid the heavy humidity of moist land under the heat of the sun, that the first germ of life vibrated and expanded to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... [58] The soil, though improper for the olive, the vine, and other productions of warmer climates, is fertile, and suitable for corn. Growth is quick, but maturation slow; both from the same cause, the great humidity of the ground and the atmosphere. [59] The earth yields gold and silver [60] and other metals, the rewards of victory. The ocean produces pearls, [61] but of a cloudy and livid hue; which some impute to unskilfulness in ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... was of oak, and they began to unscrew the lid. The humidity of the earth had rusted the screws, and it was not without some difficulty that the coffin was opened. A painful odour arose in spite of the aromatic plants ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils

... ditches the water quickly runs off the moor, and subsequently the whole countryside suffers from drought. This sort of thing has occurred wherever man has been sufficiently civilised and enterprising to commit the folly of destroying forests. Forests have an immense effect on climate, causing humidity of both the air and the soil, and give rise to moderate and persistent instead of torrential streams. Spain has been irretrievably injured by the cutting down of her forests in the course of a few hundred years. The same thing is going on, to a ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... gracious, and there was nothing in her manner to check the effusion of his confidence. She talked to him about flowers and books, getting launched with marvelous promptitude; about the theatres, about the peculiar institutions of his native country, about the humidity of Paris about the pretty complexions of the American ladies, about his impressions of France and his opinion of its female inhabitants. All this was a brilliant monologue on the part of the duchess, who, like many of her country-women, was a person ...
— The American • Henry James

... de-luxed himself to remote Spots that were supplied with Steam Heat and French Cooking, together with Wines, Liquors, and Cigars, but no matter what the Altitude or the Relative Humidity, he felt discouraged every Morning when he awoke and remembered that presently he would have to rally his Vital Forces and walk all the way ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... rubber doll in a red woollen jacket—a combination to make the perspiration run right off one with the humidity at 98—looks wistfully down from the second-story balcony of the smallpox pavilion, as the doctor goes past with the last sheep tucked under ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... rainy season (March to June); dry season (June to October); persistent high temperatures and humidity; particularly ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... [b] warme well your garments at the fire, and warm the linings of the same, for it helpeth concoction, and remoueth all humidity and moysture. But my father did not allow of this custome, warning men of strength, and those that are borne for the Common-wealth, not to accustom themselves to such kind of softnesse, which doe weaken our bodies. Also [c] when you put off your garments to ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... there is exceedingly little evidence to show that pure, fresh, open air at any reasonable temperature and humidity ever did harm when inhaled directly into the lungs. In fact, a considerable proportion of us, when swinging along at a lively gait on the country roads, or playing tennis or football, or engaged in any form of active sport, will be found to keep our lips parted and ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... Seculo, "although in water, did not present the least vestige of humidity. The news of this curious discovery was immediately circulated, and there was a great pilgrimage, including a reporter of the Seculo, to ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray

... and the jailer and his wife were immediately arrested, and plunged into those dungeons into which they would have allowed the spirit of humanity to enter. The shoes of the queen, saturated with water, soon fell from her feet. Her stockings and her dress, from the humidity of the air, were in tatters. Two soldiers, with drawn swords, were stationed by her side night and day, with the command never, even for one moment, to turn their eyes from her. The daughter of the new jailer, touched with compassion, and regardless of the fate of ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... N. moisture; moistness &c adj.; humidity, humectation^; madefaction^, dew; serein^; marsh &c 345; hygrometry, hygrometer. V. moisten, wet; humect^, humectate^; sponge, damp, bedew; imbue, imbrue, infiltrate, saturate; soak, drench &c (water) 337. be moist &c adj.; not have a dry thread; perspire ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... in the root with earth do most comply, Their leaves with water and humidity, The flowers to air draw near and subtilty, And seeds a kindred fire have with ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... his head, that he might not fall alive into the hands of the Parthians, nor, when dead, be recognized as the general. While he was in this consternation, and all his friends about him in tears, the Mardian came up, and gave them all new life. He convinced them, by the coolness and humidity of the air, which they could feel in breathing it, that the river which he had spoken of was now not far off, and the calculation of the time that had been required to reach it came, he said, to the same result, for the night was almost ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... the road through the narrow strip of jungle. The Death Ray had cut huge swathes in the tangle of trees and vines, and now areas of heaped debris, livid with the colors of recent decay, exhaled a mephitic humidity altogether alien to the snow that fell in soft, slow flakes. Each hesitated to voice the new fear: had the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... crevice through which it can slip; but this crevice I have never been able to discover. What about a dissolving fluid which would soften the mortar under the point of the ovipositor? No, for I see not a trace of humidity around the point where the thread is at work. I fall back upon a fissure, a lack of continuity somewhere, although my examination fails to discover any on the Mason-bee's nest. I was better served in another case. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... "Old General Humidity hasn't shirked his job a minute to-day," Bob Strahan told Miss Carter as they left the car and walked up the block to the ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... actually under the Cognizance of their Senses. But a Man of a larger Compass of Knowledge, who is acquainted with the Nature and Qualities of the Air, and knows what an Effect any Alterations in the Weight, the Dryness, or the Humidity of it has upon all animal Bodies, easily perceives the Reason why other Animals are much sooner sensible of any Alterations that happen in that Element than Men, and therefore to him the cawing of Ravens, the chattering of Swallows, and a Cat's washing her ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge

... the plants and animals inhabiting Borneo, Sumatra, New Guinea, and the rest, would be subjected to slightly modified sets of conditions. The climate in general would be altered in temperature, in humidity, and in its periodical variations; while the local differences would be multiplied. These modifications would affect, perhaps inappreciably, the entire flora and fauna of the region. The change of level would produce additional modifications: ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... stations was the explanation of the phenomenon.[90] Many American naturalists have observed similar facts, and they assert that the intensity of the colours of birds and mammals increases from north to south, and also with the increase of humidity. This change is imputed by Mr. J.A. Allen to the direct action of the environment. He says: "In respect to the correlation of intensity of colour in animals with the degree of humidity, it would perhaps ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... rainy, hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... {2} The shelves should be lined with velvet or chamois leather, that the delicate edges of the books may not suffer from contact with the wood. A leather lining, fitted to the back of the case, will also help to keep out humidity. Most writers recommend that the bookcases should be made of wood close in the grain, such as well-seasoned oak; or, for smaller tabernacles of literature, of mahogany, satin-wood lined with cedar, ebony, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... passing in the count's mind, she beheld him leaning against the box, with his head inclined to the curtain of the door. "Mr. Constantine!" almost unconsciously escaped her lips. He started, and discovered by the humidity on his eyelashes why he had withdrawn. Her ladyship's tears were gliding down her cheeks. Miss Egerton, greatly amazed at the oddness of this closet scene, turned to Miss Beaufort, who a moment before having caught a glimpse of the distressed countenance of the count, could only bow her head ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... hard basalt rocks split under the influence of the early morning freshness. I have myself noticed similar phenomena in the Nile valley, but it must be added that the fragments of rock broken off by the combined influence of heat and humidity present very notable differences to those worked by the hand of man, and cannot really ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... stretch themselves and turn in their webs so as to take it from the point of a pin or camel's-hair pencil. Besides water to drink, they require an atmosphere saturated with moisture, like that of their native island, the relative humidity being about seventy on the Hygrodeik scale. If stroked upon the back, they often raise their bodies as a cat does, and sometimes put back a leg to push away your finger. They may be allowed to run over one's person with perfect safety, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... thing," continued Mr. Gordon. "Working condition's another. Go to the mills and see the wet spinners. The air of the room they work in is heavy with humidity. There are the women, waists open at the throat, sleeves rolled up, hair pulled back to prevent the irritation of loose ends on damp skins, bare feet on the cement floor. At noon they snatch up their shawls and rush home for a hurried lunch. It's not surprising that Dr. Bailie reported ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell

... whales. For the first time, too, we began to experience what our preconceptions had imagined as tropical heat. Heretofore we had been hot enough, in all conscience, but the air had felt as though wafted from an opened furnace door—dry and scorching. Now, although the temperature was lower,[2] the humidity was greater. A swooning languor was abroad over the spellbound ocean, a relaxing ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... condition of the trestle. The timber had been exposed to the weather and subjected to heavy train service from the time it was treated until it was tested. The annual rainfall at New Orleans is about 60 in., and the humidity of the air is high. In spite of these conditions, there was no appearance of decay on any of the specimens tested. The specifications under which the timber was treated were ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - Tests of Creosoted Timber, Paper No. 1168 • W. B. Gregory

... beautiful chests, all inlaid most elaborately, and carried them to the Court of Hungary, to exhibit the workmanship. "When he had made obeisance to the king, and had been kindly received, he brought forward his cases and had them unpacked... but it was then he discovered that the humidity of the sea voyage had softened the glue to such an extent that when the waxed cloths in which the coffers had been wrapped were opened, almost all the pieces were found sticking to them, and so ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... head was so thick half the time that he couldn't do a thing with it. In his correspondence with Goethe it is exasperating to observe that these great poets kept so little reserve vim in stock that a slight change of temperature or humidity, or even a dark day, was enough to overdraw their health account and bankrupt their work. How glorious it would have been if they had only stored up enough exuberance to have made them health magnates, impervious to the slings and arrows of outrageous February, and able to snap their ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... successive beds, as close together as possible, and filling the interstices with cut paper or tow, in a way to form a mass that nothing can derange. No space must be left between the last bed and the cover. The box must be tarred to avoid humidity. ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various

... meat should hang to be tender, depends on the heat and humidity of the air. If it is not kept long enough, it is hard and tough; if too long, it loses its flavour. It should be hung where it will have a thorough air, and be dried with a cloth, night and morning, to keep ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... and the diplomats had a loge reserved for them next to the orchestra, and, although there were carpets and rugs under our feet, the humidity and cold penetrated to the marrow of our stateful and ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... spirits, too; and I suspect that much of the dry and rarefied humor of New England, as well as the thin and sharp physiognomies, are climatic results. We have rain enough, but not equability of temperature or moisture,—no steady, abundant supply of humidity in the air. In places in Great Britain it is said to rain on an average three days out of four the year through; yet the depth of rainfall is no greater than in this country, where it rains but the one day out of four. John Bull shows those three rainy days ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... time he fought down the urge to scream, to lie down on the ground and cover his face with his hands and scream in helpless fear. How could they have known the horror that lay in his own mind, the horror of darkness, of damp slimy walls and scurrying rodents, of the clinging, stale humidity of dungeon passageways? He himself had seldom recalled it, except in his most hideous dreams, yet he had known such fear as a boy, so many years ago, and now it was all around him. They had known somehow and ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse

... ascended, the air became purer and less impregnated with the humidity of its lower currents; changing, by a process as fine as that wrought by a chemical application, the hues and aspect of every object in the view. A vast hill-side lay basking in the sun, which illuminated on its rounded swells a hundred long stripes ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... every other single in the city—or any city. The walls are the shade of green that's best for the eyes. Furniture and fixtures are always the same colors. Every compartment has a servoconsole to condition the air, control the temperature and humidity, bring you food or any other standard service, provide teleview shows, music or requests. You could live your life inside this square hole. Everybody has everything and nothing means anything—can't ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage

... increase of lateral pressure with depth is believed to be demonstrated beyond question. It must be conceded that a considerable arch action (so-called) actually exists in many cases; but it should be equally conceded by the advocates of the existence of such action that changes in humidity, due to moving water, vibration, and appreciable viscosity, etc., will invariably destroy this action in time. In consequence, the author's reasoning in regard to the pressures against the faces of retaining walls is believed to be open to grave question as to accuracy ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem

... column is compressed until it breaks, the manner of failure depends partly upon the anatomical structure and partly upon the degree of humidity of the wood. The fibres (tracheids in conifers) act as hollow tubes bound closely together, and in giving way they either (1) ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record

... they detach wherever it is most convenient to them, their envelope, or web, a portion of which remains suspended to the trunk of the tree, where it waves to and fro like a streamer, and which becomes more or less white, according as the air and humidity of the season and situation admit. This natural silk paper has been gathered measuring a yard and a half, of an elliptical shape, which is peculiar to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various

... but the extremes of sensible heat and cold are increased by the humidity. The range of the thermometer is from 45deg Fahr., the lowest known extreme, or 48deg, the ordinary lowest extreme of January, to 82deg, the ordinary, or 86deg, the highest known extreme of July, near the level of the sea. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... themselves against wild beasts and other animals, as well as against the humidity of marshy ground, the Sakais of the plain often build their huts either up a tree or ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... and the same thing is attracted by two violent forces,—necessity and power. The water falls in rain and by necessity the earth absorbs the humidity; the sun causes it to evaporate, not of necessity, but ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci

... the case of the Kalahari, the great heated inland plains; there, meeting with the rarefied air of that hot, dry surface, the ascending heat gives it greater capacity for retaining all its remaining humidity, and few showers can be given to the middle and western lands in consequence of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... sheds abundant seed. The consequence of having adopted ridiculous titles for these academies suggested to them many other characteristic fopperies. At Florence every brother of the "Umidi" assumed the name of something aquatic, or any quality pertaining to humidity. One was called "the Frozen," another "the Damp;" one was "the Pike," another "the Swan:" and Grazzini, the celebrated novelist, is known better by the cognomen of La Lasca, "the Roach," by which he whimsically designates himself among the "Humids." I find among the Insensati, one man of learning ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... inhabitants seldom have more than fifteen or twenty days of fair weather in autumn, and hardly do eight days pass at any other season without rain. The atmosphere is consequently extremely moist, yet salubrious, and the climate is exceedingly mild and temperate. Owing to the great humidity, grain and fruits are by no means productive, yet the inhabitants raise sufficient grain, mostly barley and beans, for their support, and grow abundance of excellent flax. The town of Castro, on the eastern shore, in lat. 42 deg. 44' S. is the capital ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... harmattan, a dry and parching wind, blowing from the north-east, and accompanied by a thick smoky haze, through which the sun appears of a dull red colour. This wind, in passing over the Great Desert of Sahara, acquires a very strong attraction for humidity, and parches up every thing exposed to its current. It is, however, reckoned very salutary, particularly to Europeans, who generally recover their health during its continuance. I experienced immediate relief from sickness, both at Dr. Laidley's ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... that the radar waves take as they travel through the air is known. Normal conditions are when the temperature and relative humidity of the air decrease with an increase in altitude. But sometimes a condition will occur where at some level, instead of the temperature and/or relative humidity decreasing with altitude, it will begin to increase. This layer of warm, moist air is known as an inversion layer, and it can do all kinds ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... vast mortuary, an abode of death, where only corpses could be found, a charnel-house reeking with foul smells and putrefaction. He slackened his steps, and rested in that kitchen garden, as after a long perambulation amidst deafening noises and repulsive odours. The uproar and the sickening humidity of the fish market had departed from him; and he felt as though he were being born anew in the pure fresh air. Claude was right, he thought. The markets were a sphere of death. The soil was the life, the eternal cradle, the health ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... unquestionably true, that many of the surrounding objects in nature are constantly tending to man's destruction. The excess of heat and cold, humidity and dryness, noxious exhalations from the earth, the floating atoms in the atmosphere, the poisonous vapors from decomposed animal and vegetable matter, with many other invisible agents, are exerting their deadly influence; and were it not that every part of his system is endowed with a self-preserving ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... sun! draw from the earth Rotten humidity; below thy sister's orb Infect the air! Twinn'd brothers of one womb, Whose procreation, residence and birth, Scarce is dividant, touch them with several fortunes; The greater scorns the lesser: not nature, To whom all sores ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... understand Thaouka, it turned out, though Thaouka understood him. The intelligent animal felt humidity in the atmosphere and drank it in with frenzy, moving and making a noise with his tongue, as if taking deep draughts of some cool refreshing liquid. The Patagonian could not mistake him ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... to, then; we'll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watery pumpion; we'll teach him to know ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... sole motive in wearing it. Popular to destruction would the cool juices of the cacti be in thirsty lands, if only they might be obtained without painful and often poisonous scratches. Given moist soil and greater humidity of atmosphere to grow in, spiny plants at once show a tendency to grow taller, to branch and become leafy. A covering of hairs which reflect the light, thus diminishing the amount that might reach the juicy ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... old mother; he does not leave her as do those vagabond children who forsake their natal roof in search of adventures. He remains there, always attentive to the least want of his antique ancestor, the black earth of Kame. If she thirsts, he gives her drink, if she is troubled by too much humidity, he dries it; in order not to wound her, he works her almost without tools, with his hands; his plough merely scratches the telluric skin, which the inundation covers each year with a new epidermis. As you watch him going and coming upon that soaking ground, you feel ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... soil, it is, perhaps, the extreme limit of its range. The snake-wood, a sort of slender bush, is found here, with very many other rare Canadian plants, which are no doubt fostered by the continual humidity of the place; and, if you wish to sup full of horrors,[4] Mr. Barnett has ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... and hung with chintz, seemed to keep some traces of the elegant gallantry of the eighteenth century. A heap of still-glowing ashes—which testified to the pains taken to dispel humidity—filled the fireplace, whose marble mantlepiece supported a bust of Marie Antoinette in bisuit. Attached to the frame of the tarnished and discoloured mirror, two brass hooks, that had once doubtless served the ladies of old-fashioned days ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... all the charms of nature mutually attracted each other, while the softness of the air was beyond expression. When we contemplate a fine view in the north, the climate in some degree disturbs the pleasure which it inspires: those slight sensations of cold and humidity are like a false note in a concert, and more or less distract your attention from what you behold; but in approaching Naples you experience the friendly smiles of nature, so perfectly and without alloy, that nothing abates the agreeable sensations ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... cleaned, ignited and allowed to cool in a desiccator before weighing, since all bodies exposed to the air condense on their surfaces a layer of moisture which increases their weight. The amount and weight of this moisture varies with the humidity of the atmosphere, and the latter may change from hour to hour. The air in the desiccator (see above) is kept at a constant and low humidity by the drying agent which it contains. Bodies which remain in a desiccator ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot

... their departure from Timor for Van Dieman's Land, having on board a large proportion of sick. On drawing near the coast, the humidity of the climate and short allowance of ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... sweetness of the liquid. Day after day the end of the stem must be pared as otherwise the sap would cease to exude. A tree will produce daily anywhere from 10 to 30 liters according to the fertility of the soil and the humidity of the atmosphere. The humidity determines the duration of time that the tree produces toddy. This time varies from ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... coast, there is, within a few miles, a tableland of from 2,000 to 4,000 feet elevation, where the climate is cool and bracing, and where the jaded man or woman can soon throw off the feeling of lassitude brought about by the heat and humidity of the seaboard. In autumn the weather soon cools off, drier conditions supervene, and living again becomes a pleasure in one of the best and healthiest climates to be met with anywhere. Practically all the district under review has a sufficient rainfall ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson

... gardens. The violence everywhere done to nature repels and wearies us despite ourselves. The abundance of water, forced up and gathered together from all parts, is rendered green, thick, muddy; it disseminates humidity, unhealthy and evident; and an odour still more so. I might never finish upon the monstrous defects of a palace so immense and so immensely dear, with its accompaniments, which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... said. "The air is saturated with it! It won't be the heat, but the humidity that'll bother us—to coin ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... culture, and is entirely superior to any frame or pit. It appears, however, that in Melon-houses red spider is more frequently seen than in frames heated by fermenting material; but this point rests on management, and there can be nothing more certain than that a reasonable employment of atmospheric humidity may be made effectual for preventing and removing this pest. For the convenient cultivation of the crop a lean-to or half-span is to be preferred. The width should not exceed twelve feet, and ten to twelve feet should be the utmost height of the ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... feet was widely prevalent amongst the troops in France during the European War. Although allied to frost-bite, cold appears to play a less important part in its causation than humidity and constriction of the limbs producing ischaemia of the feet. Changes were found in the endothelium of the blood vessels, the axis cylinders of nerves, and the muscles. The condition does not ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... Washington sweltered under the most torrid spell of heat on record. It was a dry, high country, noted for an equable climate, with cool summers and mild winters. And this unprecedented wave would have been unbearable had not the atmosphere been free from humidity. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... being absorbed, save for the husk, which is the most solid part; and even that, decomposing in the earth, ultimately becomes invisible. In time some of the leaves put forth branches. The plant being thus produced by humidity from the seed is still soft and moist. Growing actively both above and below, it cannot as yet bear fruit, for it has not the quality of force and reserve (δυναμις ισχυρη και πιαρα {dynamis ischyrê kai piara}) from which a seed ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... of La Bruyere's writing is crisp and parched, but it is easy by careful reading to crack it, and to discover the coolness, the softness, the salutary humidity which lie beneath the satirical crust of his irony. He is primarily a satirist, dealing as he says with the vices of the human mind and the subterfuges of human self-deception. He lays bare "the sentiments and the movements of men, exposing the principles ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... stars, that being the expected number of seceding States, all presented as a representation of the good time coming. It remained there for over a month, when one of those violent storms of wind and rain variegating the humidity of a South-Carolinian winter tore it to pieces, leaving only the skeleton framework on which it had been supported. May not this picture and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... from the shrinkage and brittleness of the leather. The plan has been proposed of introducing the vapor of water to counteract the effects of dryness upon the bindings. In this library the atmosphere has the usual humidity of that out of doors, being warmed by bringing the outer air in over pipes conveying hot water, while the other libraries have the higher heat of steam-pipes. If, therefore, its atmosphere differs from that of the other libraries in respect to moisture, the variation is in the direction ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... substances, we found ourselves obliged to throw away others, which we had collected a considerable time before. These sacrifices were not less vexatious than the losses we accidentally sustained. Sad experience taught us but too late, that from the sultry humidity of the climate, and the frequent falls of the beasts of burden, we could preserve neither the skins of animals hastily prepared, nor the fishes and reptiles placed in phials filled with alcohol. I enter into these details, because, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... that is unfavourable, I do the same. The meteorologist is able to tell with mathematical accuracy in his laboratory, after a glance at his instruments, not only the direction of the prevailing wind, but the atmospheric pressure and the degree of humidity as well. I am able only, however, to say with the pilot: "I sail this way," and then make head ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... direct attention to C.W. Beebe's ("Zoologica: N.Y. Zool. Soc." Vol. I. No. 1, Sept. 25, 1907: "Geographic variation in birds with especial reference to the effects of humidity".) recent discovery that the pigmentation of the plumage of certain birds is increased by confinement in a superhumid atmosphere. In Scardafella inca, on which the most complete series of experiments was made, the changes took place only at the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... frequently violent were always of short continuance. Nevertheless, there was the usual current of heavy, damp night air, which, passing over the summits of the trees, scarcely appeared to descend as low as the surface of the glassy lake, but kept moving a short distance above it, saturated with the humidity that constantly arose from the woods, and apparently never proceeding far in any one direction. The currents were influenced by the formation of the hills, as a matter of course, a circumstance that rendered even fresh breezes ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... can be preserved in European climates only by the utmost care in guarding it from the operation of atmospheric temperature. The cold and humidity of our winters are fatally injurious to its health. Neatness and cleanliness to a fastidious degree are constitutional traits of the marikina, and the greatest possible attention must be paid to it in this way, in a state of captivity. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various

... for the operation, as the glass should be perfectly dry, and unaffected by the humidity of the atmosphere. Of course, if you have a choice, it is more convenient to work on your glass before it is fixed in the frame. If you are working on a piece of unattached glass, lay it on a flat table (a marble slab is preferable), over which you must previously ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... room is the quietest part of the mill—noisy enough, but calm compared to the others. In Excelsior this room is, of course, enormous, light and well ventilated, although the temperature, on account of some quality of the yarn, is kept at a point of humidity ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... expected, these local spinnings are most apt to occur in the season when the air next the earth is relatively warm, and they are aptest to take place in the half of the advancing front lying between the east and south, for the reason that there the highest temperatures and the greatest humidity are likely to coexist. In that part of the field, during the time when the storm is advancing from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic, a dozen or more of these spinning uprushes may be produced, though few of them are likely to be of large size ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... formidable, as it now appeared to them, than before — were made the subject of long and serious discussion. It was at length decided that Pizarro should remain in his present quarters, inconvenient and even unwholesome as they were rendered by the humidity of the climate, and the pestilent swarms of insects that filled the atmosphere. Almagro would pass over to Panama, lay the case before the governor, and secure, if possible, his good-will towards the prosecution of the enterprise. If no obstacle were thrown in their way from ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... party, he passed by the spot where this animal had fallen; and, in elucidation of what I have stated, I will here give the extract of a letter I subsequently received from him from India. Speaking of the humidity of the climate of Bengal, he says: "It appears to me that heat alone is rather a preservative from decomposition; of which I recollect an instance, in the bullock that died in the march through the Pine scrub on the ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... influenced the lower Tarim, and each time a change occurred in the latter's discharge, the Koncheh took a more westward course, to the detriment of its old eastern branch (Ilek). Always following the gradually receding humidity, the vegetable life changed too, while moving sands were taking its place, conquering more and more ground for the desert, and marking their conquest by ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... this passage is speaking of the civil year, then the flood occurred in September or October, an opinion I find Lyra held. It is true that fall and winter are more liable to rains, the signs of the zodiac pointing to humidity. Again, as Moses writes further on, a dove was sent forth in the tenth month and brought back a green olive branch. This fact seems to harmonize with the view that ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... one side, separated only by the high way of the quays. The bed of the Seine is above the floor of the prison. The surrounding earth was consequently saturated with water, and the oozing moisture diffused over the walls and the floors the humidity of the sepulcher. The plash of the river; the rumbling of carts upon the pavements overhead; the heavy tramp of countless footfalls, as the multitude poured into and out of the halls of justice, mingled ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... overcome with humidity, foretells that you will combat enemies fiercely, but their superior force will submerge you ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... demand, that they who yield us food and comfort, should have ample food and comfort themselves—that they who aid to clothe us should have at least sufficient covering to protect them from the rigour and humidity of the climate in which they labour—that they should have houses fitted for the inhabitants of a civilized country, not wigwams worse than those of the savage—that they should be taught and led and fostered till ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers

... scientific standpoint, much interesting (p. 220) information is conveyed about the laws which, discovered comparatively recently, have proved of vital importance and utility to mankind. The humidity and pressure of the air, the velocity of the wind, rain and snow, sleet and hail-storms, tornadoes and cyclones, are ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... United States. Further chapters concern the tests as to the explosibility of coal dust, made by the Geological Survey, at Pittsburg; investigations, both at the Pittsburg laboratory and in mines, as to the humidity of mine air. There is also a chapter on the chemical investigations into the ignition of coal dust by Dr. J. C. W. Frazer, of the Geological Survey. The application of some of these data to actual mine conditions in Europe, in the last ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... the queen, which has left the hive for impregnation, is the same that returns to deposit her eggs, you will find it necessary to paint the thorax with some varnish that resists humidity. It will also be right to paint the thorax of a considerable number of workers in order to discover the duration of their life. This is a more ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber

... which agriculture is carried on are so many of them outside of the control of the operator that it is very difficult to predict results or to attain any fixed standard. This is necessarily so with an operation which has so many uncertain factors to deal with as agriculture. Humidity of the atmosphere and of the soil, the available plant food in the soil, methods of tillage, fertilizers used, recurrence of frosts, amount of sunlight, the altitude and latitude of different localities, all have a bearing upon crop production. It is, therefore, ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... great disadvantage of the art of painting that, while other productions of genius may survive the revolution of ages, the creations of the pencil are intrusted to perishable wood or canvas. From the effect of heat, humidity, various exhalations to which they may be carelessly exposed, and even an unperceived neglect in the priming of the pannel or cloth, master-pieces are in danger of disappearing for ever. Happy, then, is it for the arts that this invaluable discovery has been ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... noon-day to visit them by the light of a candle. We saw the hooks of those chains, by which the prisoners were fastened by their necks to the walls of their cells; many of which being below the level of the water were in a constant state of humidity; from which issued a noxious vapour, which more than once extinguished the candles. Since the destruction of the building many subterraneous cells have been discovered under a piece of ground, which seemed only a bank of solid earth before the horrid secrets of this prison-house were disclosed. ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... beneath an overcast sky; the air that fanned her face was warm and heavy with humidity; what little breeze there was, aside from that created by the motion of the cab, bore on its leaden wings the ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... for the time appeased, he found a new discomfort. The humidity of the walls, and the wind that crept through the unseen ventilator, chilled him to the bone. To keep ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... towards the center of the earth, we do not, therefore, know the nature of gravity, that is, the cause or principle in virtue of which bodies descend, and we must derive our knowledge of it from some other source. The same may be said of a vacuum and atoms, of heat and cold, of dryness and humidity, and of salt, sulphur, and mercury, and the other things of this sort which some have adopted as their principles. But no conclusion deduced from a principle which is not clear can be evident, even although the deduction be formally valid; and ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes

... wintry mist rises low down in the little valleys of the sand. And that again we were not expecting; beyond question the latest invaders of this country, by changing the course of the old Nile, so as to water the earth and make it more productive, have brought hither the humidity of their own misty isle. And this strange cold, this mist, light as it still is, seem to presage the end of ages, give an added remoteness and finality to all this dead past, which lies here beneath us in subterranean labyrinths haunted by a ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... Addix were sitting. Maria regarded her father with a sort of contemptuous wonder, tinctured with unwilling admiration. Her father, on his return from his evenings spent with Miss Ida Slome, looked always years younger than Maria had ever seen him. There was the humidity of youth in his eyes, the flush of youth on his cheeks, the triumph of youth in his expression. Harry Edgham, in spite of lines on his face, in spite, even, of a shimmer of gray and thinness of hair on the temples, looked as young as youth itself, in this rejuvenation of his affection, for he was ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... winter nor the heat of summer, in northern Arizona, are as frigid or as torrid as the readings of the thermometer may seem to indicate. The cold or heat is not felt to such an extreme as in the East. A minimum of humidity is the basic reason for this wide difference between, for example, the July or January climate of New York, and the July or January climate of the Grand Canyon. Extremes that in New York drive people ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... zone: occupies southern part of United States from Chesapeake Bay to the great interior valley of California. Is interrupted by the continental divide in eastern Arizona and west New Mexico and divided according to conditions of humidity into an eastern or Austroriparian and western ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... evaporation, then they become infused with the saline properties of the soil,[31] and all about them is marked with barrenness. If the process of evaporation was less intense than it is,[32] all vegetation would die from the extreme humidity of the soil; as the gardener's phrase is, it would rot. Even in the city of Mexico itself, a couple of feet of digging in its alluvial foundation brings you to the water-level in the dry season, and seventy or eighty yards of boring does not carry you beyond the perceptible ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... looks at it very carefully. One of the fragments was darker on the surface; of this he felt sure, as when he removed them he was careful to keep them as they lay. Below, the piece had its natural colour, that of dry stone. He assured himself that the darker shade really proceeded from humidity; it was still moist. The fragment, therefore, must have been turned over; and that, too, a very short time ago. Only a large animal or a man could have done this. He looked closely to see whether there were any scratches indicative ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... hit upon a kind of potter's earth, which is called ceramite, and there had found no source or drop of water; for that sort of earth, by reason of its substance, which is fat, strong, firm, and close, so retaineth its humidity, that it doth not easily evaporate it by any outward ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... while the temperature is hot and parching. In winter, clouds are almost as rare; but winds often play violently over the great tracts of unbroken country. When these blow from the south they soon lose their warmth and humidity at the contact of a soil which, but a short while ago, was at the bottom of the sea, and is, therefore, in many places still strongly impregnated with salt which acts as a refrigerant.[19] Again, when the north wind comes down from the snowy summits of Armenia or Kurdistan, ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... was most distressing. It had rained all night. The roaring of the overflowing gutters filled the deserted streets, in which the houses, like sponges, absorbed the humidity, which penetrating to the interior, made the walls sweat from cellar to garret. Jeanne had left the convent the day before, free for all time, ready to seize all the joys of life, of which she had dreamed ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... The humidity at the Segond Channel is exceptionally great. As we stood on the fine coral sand that forms the shores of the channel, our clothes were damp with the rain from the weeds and shrubs which we had passed through while stumbling through the plantation. The steel-grey ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... humidity and temperature controls," I told her. She nodded in quick comprehension, but I went on for Muller's benefit. "Trying to give the plants the best growing atmosphere. We'll feel just as hot and sticky when the ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey

... yet wet and breathing, like those of the living statue in the Winter's Tale. Nature in his descriptions is seen growing around us, fresh and lusty as in itself. We feel the effect of the atmosphere, its humidity or clearness, its heat or cold, the glow of summer, the gloom of winter, the tender promise of the spring, the full overshadowing foliage, the declining pomp and deepening tints of autumn. He transports us to the scorching heat of vertical ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... to spend his time this way in spite of the discomfort imposed by any kind of activity. Humidity was a physical factor which seemed to have gone undiscovered by the inhabitants of the planet they were on. He was sure it was constantly maintained within a fractional per cent of one hundred as he donned a clean pair of trunks and staggered ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones

... that Syria has three climates. The summits of Libanus, for instance, covered with snow, diffuse a salubrious coolness in the interior; the flat situations, on the contrary, especially those which stretch along the line of the coast, are constantly subjected to heat, accompanied with great humidity; while the adjoining plains of the desert are scorched by the rays of a burning sun. The seasons and the productions, of course, undergo a corresponding variation. In the mountains the months of spring and summer very nearly coincide with those in the southern parts ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... like me to do that. That place is under full temperature and humidity control, and every time an outsider barges in the whole system ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp

... o'clock crowds began to gather in Beresford-place, and in an hour about ten thousand men were present. The morning had succeeded to the hopeless humidity of the night, and the drizzling rain fell with almost dispiteous persistence. The early trains from Kingstown and Dalkey, and all the citerior townlands, brought large numbers into Dublin; and Westland-row, Brunswick, D'Olier, ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... produced by nutrition (food supply), climate, humidity, altitude, etc. Comparative physiology and pathology. Medical geography. Comparative nosology of different races. Criminal anthropology. Pathology of races. Fertility and sterility of races. Reproduction ...
— Anthropology - As a Science and as a Branch of University Education in the United States • Daniel Garrison Brinton

... that done, he soon recovered his cheerfulness and his aridity. Glantz the councillor thus saw the prize fished away before his eyes—those very eyes which he had already brought into an Accessit,[19] or inchoate state of humidity; this vexed him: and his mortification was the greater on thinking of his own pathetic exertions, and the abortive appetite for the prize which he had thus uttered in words as ineffectual as his own sermons; and at this moment he was ready to weep ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... dry elevated regions the heat is never oppressive in the day and the nights are always cool. Day temperatures of 120 deg. or more are not uncommon in the valleys in July and August, but the humidity is so slight that such high readings do not produce the discomfort the figures might imply. In his calico shirt and breeches the Navaho is quite comfortable, and in the cool of the evening and night he has but ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... ought to see a mill with the old vapour-pot system with the steam shooting out into the room. Look here!" He led Janet to the apparatus in which the pure air is forced through wet cloths, removing the dust, explaining how the ventilation and humidity were regulated automatically, how the temperature of the room ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... light ones some two weeks ago. I got jerry that there would be some class to the humidity, so I made the ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... was sweltering under an abnormal heat. There was not one breath of the usual invigorating mountain air. A few more degrees of humidity, and the cup of endurance would have been filled to overflowing and toiling humanity breathing something like sheer moisture. The sky was heavy and gray, and a dull sun, as though it too had been rendered faint-hearted, was painfully struggling ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... said. "Atmosphere is rather denser than I had expected. Hendricks reports the air breathable, with a humidity of one hundred. And—tell me, sir, what do you make of the appearance of ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... reaching out its stems and tendrils wide of the one glorified window in the gable, in whose red dyes glimmered the triumph of a bloody countenance. The mossy walls, often scraped, the mossified pavement, the greenish tombs of marble under the maples and firs, showed the effect of shade, solitude, and humidity upon all things of brick in this climate, where wood was already rising into favor as building material, but to the detraction of picturesqueness and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... winter-sleep of plants, a large portion of the north would be entirely uninhabitable. Besides, the temperature of a place does not depend exclusively on its latitude, or on its height above the sea-level.(196) The humidity of the climate is, as a rule, great in proportion to the quantity of water in its neighborhood, and to the height of its temperature; although, for instance, in Europe, the number of rainy days increases, the further ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... more oppressive. It was one of those airless, stifling afternoons which afflict New York in the summer. He remembered seeing something about a record in the evening paper which he had bought on his way to the studio, a whole column about heat and humidity. It certainly felt unusually warm ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... gloominess, and humidity, of a Milanese sky in winter; which, I conclude, under the old regime, led to all the hospitality, and conviviality, practised here, by ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson

... tempered by easterly trade winds, relatively low humidity, little seasonal temperature variation; rainy season September ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... great mystery. I grant that. But I am persuaded that the humidity of the atmosphere in these remote regions is such that particles of daylight adhere to the disk and it was by aid of these that we were enabled to see ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and the humidity very heavy, and at Las Palmas inside the bungalow that served as a police-station the lamps on either side of the lieutenant's desk burned like tiny furnaces. Between them, panting in the moist heat and with the sweat from his forehead and hand dripping upon an otherwise immaculate report, sat ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... comprised. The combination of water and earth is a unity, but this unity is mixture. If we bring together a base and an acid, we have as the result a crystal; also water; but water which cannot be discerned and which gives no trace of humidity. Here the unity of the water and of this matter is a unity different from the mixture of water and earth. The essential point is the difference of these determinations. The unity of God is always unity, but what is of primary importance is to know the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... and consequent humidity of the town that the sides of the streets were connected, at the height of two or perhaps three stories, by thin arches—mere jets of stone from the one house to the other, with but in rare instance the smallest ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... business office of the company, which had made the final arrangements, had, in his opinion, been a little too much in a hurry to get the thing over with. Thorn himself felt that the test could have at least waited until the weather cooled off. The only consolation he had was that, out here, the humidity was so low that he could stay fairly comfortable in spite of the heat as long as there was plenty of drinking water. He had ...
— With No Strings Attached • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)



Words linked to "Humidity" :   humidness, humidify, wetness, relative humidity, humid, mugginess



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